CHAPTER 10- PROMISES MADE

MY FOURTH CHAPTER TODAY. JUST A SHORT ONE ABOUT DRACO AND HARRY.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, a shiver ran through him, and his fingers tensed on the wand in his pocket. Malfoy lay on his side facing the wall, the blanket pulled up to just below his shoulders and wrapped tightly around him as though someone might take it. Only the faint motions of his breathing gave any sign he was alive, otherwise, he could have been made of stone. He had always been slender, but now he was gaunt, shoulder blades standing out starkly, the line of his spine shadowed against his skin. Harry had never seen skin so utterly colorless. Malfoy's natural pallor had been exacerbated by his virtual imprisonment in his family's manor house, and skin, sheets, and white-blond hair were within a fraction of one another. Against this, the scars of the Flagellus Curse looked every bit as violent as the act that had caused them, red-purple ropes of raised tissue as thick as Harry's finger that streaked across the exposed portion of his back, wrapping viciously onto the tops of his shoulders and around his upper arm.

"If you're here to gloat, Potter, get on with it." The voice came without any movement, and Harry barely kept himself from startling at the realization that Malfoy was not, as he had assumed, asleep. It was the same familiar, sneering drawl, but Harry could hear an indefinable change to it, as though it had been hollowed out in the deepest parts. "You won. I lost. Congratulations, oh Chosen One."

"Actually," Harry responded, keeping his own voice deliberately cool and neutral, "I'm here to give you this."

Slowly, even lazily, Malfoy rolled over. Harry pulled the hawthorn wand out of his pocket and held it out, letting it lay across his open palm. At once, Malfoy sat up, the blanket falling unnoticed from his shoulders, and two spots of livid color flushed high on his prominent cheekbones, his eyes flashing. "My wand!" The words were a hiss, a growl, barely human. He looked like an animal that had been starved for weeks suddenly shown fresh meat, and Harry fought the urge to draw back, oddly in that moment more genuinely afraid of Draco – helpless, starved, beaten though he was – than he had ever been before.

The burning gray eyes looked up to him, and suddenly, the familiar veneer came slamming down with shocking abruptness. Malfoy reclined back against the wall, pulling one knee up to his chest and slinging an arm over it as he regarded Potter, his face a studied sneer. "What do you want for it? Am I supposed to beg forgiveness for the error of my ways and kiss and make up to Granger?"

"Well," said Harry dryly, "I think if you kissed Hermione, Ron would feed you most of your own teeth, but that's beside the point."

"Weasley and the Mudblood? Well…" he smirked, "I suppose that's marrying up for him."

"Shut it, Malfoy." Harry snapped. This was not going at all as he had planned. The urge to rise to Malfoy's taunts was getting stronger, the rationale for forging some kind of peace dimming rapidly. He took a deep breath. "I want a promise."

"What makes you think I would keep it?" The tone of challenge was still there, but Malfoy's eyes had returned to the wand, and a touch of hunger was creeping at the edges again.

"Because," Harry answered bluntly, "you're a pompous, nasty, bullying, prejudiced, self-righteous, sadistic git…but you're not a liar and you've proven yourself worthy,"

Malfoy raised one eyebrow. "Am I supposed to thank you for that?" he asked, sarcastically.

Harry ignored him. "I just want you to swear to me this is over, and I'll give you your wand back."

Genuine confusion crossed beneath the snide veneer. "The Dark Lord is dead, Potter. Of course it's over. Or does the great Harry Potter do so many fantastic things that he just can't keep track of such menial details?"

"I mean between you and me." Harry couldn't keep the heat out of his voice, but he didn't care. He took a step forward, clenching his fist around the hawthorn wand. Malfoy's lips parted, he leaned forward ever so slightly, and for a moment, he seemed to be about to beg Harry not to snap it. The tiny motion gave Harry a surge of vindictive satisfaction, but guilt followed instantly on its heels, and he relaxed his grip.

"What do you mean?" Malfoy asked warily, his eyes not leaving the wand.

"I mean that we have been fighting for years, with and without Voldemort. Like it or not, people will follow me, and I know better than to underestimate you and your parents, but I will not have our kids growing up like we did because…"Harry snorted derisively, "Because you took Neville's Remembrall when we were eleven." Malfoy's eyes narrowed, and Harry continued. "Look, we can let this go now, or it can go on and on and on and on, and we can be forty years old, hexing each other and casting jinxes and making stupid, goading comments because of things that were said and done while we were children. We're men now, Draco. All I want you to do is promise to act like it."

He could see Malfoy wrestling with the same knot of feelings he was, even though he had the cautionary example of Snape and the Marauders that Malfoy lacked. Pride was the worst, Harry knew, and if it was so hard for him, how much harder for someone raised with pride valued above all else, and with that pride so horribly battered the past year. Almost unconsciously, the white fingers traced the line of one livid scar that wrapped around his bicep, grey eyes seeing into something that Harry did not want to know. Then at last he raised his head, pointed chin thrust out defiantly. "If you expect me to be nice and friendly like yesterday…"

Part of Harry almost laughed with relief, but only the faintest, cynical smile touched his mouth. "Don't hold your breath for the invite."

The white-blond head nodded. "Then you have my word. I end it if you do."

"Then it's ended." Harry held out the wand to his former nemesis, and Malfoy snatched it out of his hand with a movement that was indecently fast. As his hand closed over the thin stick of hawthorn, silver sparks shot from the end, and Malfoy's eyes closed involuntarily, his lips pressing together with a look that was embarrassingly intimate. Eyes still closed, his fingers stroked along the length of the wood, and his head bowed low so that all Harry could see was his hair falling in a thick curtain to hide his face.

One streak of hair seemed to be pure white, and Harry wondered if it was just an illusion, or if something had happened to prematurely strip it of what little color it had. He wouldn't be surprised if there were a few gray hairs in his own unruly black, when it came to that. But it was over now. He turned away, leaving Malfoy with his wand, surprisingly feeling not the least bit concerned about turning his back on his newly re-armed enemy of so many years, when Malfoy called after him.

What Harry didn't know was that Draco Malfoy is and will always be a man full of deceits and lies … and what was coming for him is worse than losing a friend or a Quidditch game.